Am I still intensely upset over how the 2016 North Carolina gubernatorial race went?

Oh, I most definitely am. I’ll be holding a grudge towards Mecklenburg County and New Hanover County Republicans for the next several general elections, easily.

While I sulk, I still like to keep up with what former Governor Pat McCrory is doing, because I fully believe that he’s still got a lot to offer and we’ve not heard the last from him.

McCrory sat down last week to do a one-on-one interview on “Front Row With Marc Rotterman,” and covered topics from the HB2 repeal bill, HB142, to learning to drive again after four years of being driven everywhere.

For starters, the man needs a good GPS. He says he spent around four hours a day, every day as governor in the back of an SUV, making phone calls or looking at paperwork, not paying attention to where they were going. Now that he has no driver, he gets lost a lot.

I feel your pain, Sir.

Interestingly, he supports the recently passed HB2 repeal bill, HB142.

That approval likely is because the bill hits a “reset” for the state, putting the issue of bathroom access back to where it was before the Charlotte City Council attempted to ram their ill-advised ordinance down the throats of Charlotte citizens.

To highlight the hypocrisy of the typical Democrat, this is the very effort offered by McCrory and the General Assembly in 2016, before the election, but leaked documents showed that Cooper and state Democrats convinced the mayor of Charlotte and members of the city council to reject the offer, as they kept their fingers crossed for economic downfall of the state, in order to use it as a campaign tool.

As I noted, it was fickle, petty Republicans in Mecklenburg and New Hanover that ultimately cost McCrory the governorship, but that doesn’t make Democrats who rooted for the state to suffer any less loathsome.

Governor McCrory has a particular bone to pick with the NCAA and ACC, who pretty much blackmailed the state, pulling fairly won championships from North Carolina colleges and games from the area, threatening to do even more, if their demands of all-access, gender free-for-all bathrooms in the Tar Heel state were not met.

They made these demands, even as they held games in other states that also kept their bathrooms gender-segregated.

Oddly enough, the NCAA lifted their boycott – not after HB142 was passed – but after the UNC Tar Heels won the NCAA men’s college basketball championship, which would put NCAA-sponsored merchandise in high demand.

McCrory went on to point out that the NCAA held three football games in the Triangle area, in the middle of the hurricane, after repeated warnings about hazardous conditions.

Twenty-eight North Carolina citizens died during Hurricane Matthew – mostly those who ended up being swept away in their cars and drowned.

He feels that if they have no problem putting fans and players at risk by holding games during the middle of a crisis, then they shouldn’t be involving themselves in social issues.

McCrory added $20 million to the state healthcare budget to aid in opioid treatment and helped set up treatment courts, in order to battle the growing addiction problem in the state.

He actually calls it one of his proudest moments as governor.

Other topics covered included sanctuary cities, gang violence, and his view of President Trump (He says he’s a developer, so he sees things as a “big picture,” and bothers with the details later).

It was a substantive interview, and this man got a really raw deal in the last election.

I have yet to hear Roy Cooper speak about any issue with the same level of knowledge or passion.

When asked if he would run again in 2020, McCrory was a bit more coy. He said he’d have to discuss it with his wife, because as yet, they’ve not discussed anything, as they try to get used to private life, again.

Great interview, and well worth the time to listen.